TALLAHASSEE , Fla. — The Senate Fiscal Policy Committee on Tuesday approved a measure aimed at imposing additional hurdles on the ballot-initiative process and heightening penalties for wrongdoing.
Lawmakers are pursuing the changes after highly contentious and expensive battles over proposed ballot initiatives last year that sought to put abortion rights in the state Constitution and allow recreational marijuana for adults.
Gov. Ron DeSantis helped lead campaigns to defeat the proposals, which fell short of receiving the necessary 60 percent voter approval to pass. DeSantis this year is championing the ensuing effort to crack down on the ballot-initiative process.
Senate Ethics and Elections Chairman Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, told the Fiscal Policy Committee that the proposed changes seek to address investigations by the state Office of Election Crimes and Security that found wrongdoing related to the 2024 initiatives.
“Bad actors have undermined and corrupted” the ballot-initiative process, Gaetz, a former Senate president, said.
“There’s one stain on Florida’s election integrity, and it’s deep and it’s broad and it’s ugly,” he added.
The Senate plan (SB 7016), which is ready to head to the full Senate, doesn’t go as far as a bill (HB 1205) approved by the House last week.
As an example, the House plan would require the Office of Elections Crimes and Security to investigate if 10 percent of submitted petitions during any reporting period are deemed invalid. Supporters of proposed constitutional amendments often submit more signatures than are needed to get on the ballot, with the expectation that some will be rejected. The proposed 90 percent validation rate poses a virtually insurmountable hurdle, critics argue.
The Senate proposal would require an investigation if 25 percent of submitted petitions are deemed invalid. The Senate bill says that sponsors of initiatives cannot be fined if they discover a violation of signature-gathering laws and report it “as soon as practicable” to the secretary of state’s office, something the House does not include in its plan.
Critics of the legislation argued Tuesday that the proposed restrictions could expose sponsors of ballot measures to exorbitant fines and erect unnecessary hurdles to what many said was one of the nation’s most onerous signature-gathering processes.
The bill “imposes a minefield of new barriers for citizen-led amendments and essentially criminalizes many aspects of the process,” Brad Ashwell, state director of All Voting is Local Action, told the panel.
The Senate bill also would require anyone who gathers signatures to register with the state and undergo training. Currently, unpaid volunteers who circulate petitions do not have to register.
The Senate proposal also would cap how many petitions someone who is not registered can possess and make violations of the restriction a felony. Unregistered people would be allowed to possess petitions for themselves, two other people and certain family members.
One of the most-controversial changes included in both bills would shorten from 30 days to 10 days the length of time signature gatherers would have to submit petitions to supervisors of elections and would increase penalties for late-filed petitions. Both chambers’ plans also would require voters to provide identifying information, such as their driver’s license numbers, when signing petitions and require people gathering petitions to be Florida residents.
The Senate proposal does not include a part of the House bill that would give the Legislature more power to carry out amendments that pass by allowing lawmakers to define “terms of art” in initiatives.
In addition, the Senate and House plans vary on how felons and people who are not U.S. citizens can participate in the initiative process. The House would prohibit non-citizens or felons from “collecting or handling” petitions, while the Senate version would prohibit felons or non-citizens only from collecting petitions. The Senate also would not require sponsors to conduct background checks on workers who gather signatures.
Both proposals would require county supervisors of elections to notify voters whose signatures have been validated and allow them to revoke their signatures.
The Senate bill is “responsive to very real fraud and deficiencies in the system that have been identified,” Sen. Erin Grall, R-Vero Beach, said before the committee approved the bill Tuesday with a 19-5 vote along party lines.
“Pick the issue that you would least like to see in the Constitution … and then decide what is your tolerance for fraud and that is why are doing this,” she said.
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